Personally, I couldn't disagree with your general statement more, as I have had the exact opposite experience in that paying more for good gaming peripherals from trustworthy brands is worth every penny - BUT to be fair, I am only comparing the gaming peripherals to other gaming peripherals. As an example, I will never buy a Razor product as every single one I've had has been cheap trash that dies in 3-6 months. I learned to pay the money for Logitech. I've been using one of their gaming mice for about 3 or 4 years now and it is just now starting to show some signs of age with wheel clicks occasionally not registering, and all like 15 other buttons still work as expected just fine. I think the big problem is that there are a lot of crappy "gaming" brands that jack the price way up for cheap crap just because they slapped some LEDs on it and give it an edgy name. They throw a ton of money at marketing and advertising, and the price point is high, so the general population start to think of them as a high-end premium brand when they are (probably) just taking a $7 walmart mouse and slapping a new outer shell on it with some cheap RGB (so they can convince you to install their bloatware while they are at it).

No hate intended, as these are all just our personal opinions and there is no "right" or "wrong" answer. I personally cringe at the idea of going back to a cheap "$7 walmart mouse", but if it works for someone else I'm not trying to tell them they are wrong. :P